Deep fat frying of foods such as corn dogs is a preferred cooking method because of the savory flavor and appearance of the foods prepared by that method. However, it has been inconvenient and uneconomical to prepare small or single servings of these deep fat fried foods on a kitchen range burner or stove top. This is chiefly due to the large volume of oil usually required for the deep fat frying of corn dogs in conventional cooking pots to achieve the desired results. In addition, the cleanup and disposal of this volume of oil after frying corn dogs in conventional frying pots makes the preparation of single servings of corn dogs inconvenient and impractical. Further, merely reducing the size of conventionally configured pots or reducing the amount of cooking oil used to prepare single servings presents additional problems to the user. Simply reducing the amount of oil in a conventional pot produces inconsistent or poor cooking results because the food is not fully covered with oil while frying. Simply reducing the pot size increases the danger of spillage and the risk of flaming the hot oil used in frying the foods.
Some small electric fryers sold under the trademark (PRESTO FRY BABY and FRY DADDY) attempt to address these needs. Other corn dog frying devices are illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,858,496 to Downers, U.S. Pat. No. 4,430,930 to Walser, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,103,604 to Berard.
The PRESTO fryers are electric and cannot be used on range or stove tops. Further, the PRESTO fryers are merely a scaled down, smaller sized version of conventional deep fat fryers. They have a relatively short and wide oil container which does not readily accommodate the long tubular shape of a corn dog.
The Downers patent teaches an apparatus for holding and suspending stick-carried foods in a cooking pot containing a frying medium which utilizes stick clips mounted to a ring conforming to the shape of the cook pot. The Walser patent teaches a commercial sized fryer for the production and the cooking of many corn dogs on an assembly line type basis. The Berard patent illustrates typical food fryer and basket devices. The aforementioned devices do not teach an apparatus for deep fat frying of corn dogs that will allow a reduced volume of cooking oil to facilitate single serving cooking.
Other frankfurter cookers for stove top use are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,955,487 to Chetta and U.S. Pat. No. 4,612,851 to McManus. These devices teach methods to retain frankfurters over a heat source to achieve grilling effects while cooking. They do not teach an apparatus to facilitate deep fat frying of single servings.
Consequently, a need exists for an improved deep fat fryer for use on a stove top which will allow efficient frying of single or small servings of corn dogs in a reduced volume of cooking oil.